Digital Rain Media Art Festival reveals program details

From September 25 to 28, St. Petersburg will become the main venue for contemporary digital art. For the first time, the city will host the large-scale international Digital Rain festival, which will bring together more than 15 venues, works by leading Russian and foreign media artists, as well as a special educational and performative program.

The festival focuses on the topic of "Flows" as a metaphor for digital exchange and exploring the dynamics of the modern world.

The Digital Rain program covers iconic locations in the city, including the New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater named after Vs.Meyerhold, Sevkabel Port, the Multimedia Center of the Russian Museum (Western Pavilion of Mikhailovsky Castle), OLYMPUS Nevsky 20 of the Mayakovsky Library, the PBX and SENO spaces, the Rotunda on Gorokhovaya, the Yandex Museum and many others. others. All of them will be open to the public for free.

Among the most anticipated works at the festival is the installation "Antifragility 3.D" by LYM ART / LYM Robotics x T-Bank / Zakharova-Masaidov, which will be presented in the space of the UKT Sevkabel Port. It is a visualization of the birth of an idea as tension between poles – it is in this understanding of antifragility that artists and T-Bank have found common ground.: the ability to extract potential from chaos, turning it into an impulse for growth; audio-visual work "Espectrees" from the Spanish Playmodes collective in the SENO space, which visualizes sound and turns it into a set of waves; light installation "Lighthouse" from the Talking Birds & Flying Fish team, embodying the image of the lighthouse as a symbol of hope, security and changes at the OLYMPUS Nevsky 20 site of the Library named afterMayakovsky.

The new stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater will act as the main discussion and performative platform. On September 27-28, an educational program will be held here with the participation of leading experts in the field of media art and creative industries, who will reveal important and profound topics: from trends in the world of technological art to the ethics of new media and the legal aspects of working with digital art. Among the invited speakers: Dmitry Bulatov (artist, curator, art theorist), Lisa Savina (curator, gallery owner, art critic, head of the Sparta curatorial agency), Evgeny Stepanov (evangelist of new media and multimedia, media art & tech critic, Director of Smartlight Development), Evgeny Timashchuk (co-founder and LYM producer, expert in international shows and creative technologies), Rashid Osmanov (CEO of formate Studio, founder and curator of the NUR Festival), Andrey Mikhailovsky (producer of the PROSVET festival, curator of the City of Light / Territory of the Future exhibition. Moscow 2030") and many others. Admission is free, upon prior registration.

On the same days, the audience will see two premieres: the choreographic performance "Synthetic Morphology" by Anastasia Alyokhina, the audience will see choreography using hand-held tentacle prostheses controlled by muscles and electronic devices. The second premiere will be the poetic play "Lacuna" by Dmitry Masaidov x LYM ART, which explores through a poetic prism the future relationship between man and his technological twin, the humanoid robot Unitree G1. Entrance to the performances is by ticket.

The Russian Museum's exhibition "Streams" will open in the Western Pavilion of the Mikhailovsky Castle. Water." The theme of the Digital Rain 2025 Media Art Festival is "Streams", which deciphers the different semantic meanings of the word "streams", passing them through the city of St. Petersburg, its history, images and atmosphere. The works of the exhibition participants represent different boundaries of these states of "flow", they all use the phenomenon of "water", but each in its own form, as information, as a process, as an attempt to return the past and find a new way, as a digital ecosystem.

One of the most significant projects of the festival, from the point of view of the history of media art, will be the urban art route "Media Art of St. Petersburg" with augmented reality, combining 35 iconic points on the city map related to the history of media art. From September 25, using the New Stage XR mobile app, everyone will be able to go for a walk and see 14 augmented reality art projects created specifically for the route, as well as listen to stories from witnesses of the era on Radio Stubnitz. The presentation of the route will take place on September 26 at 19:00 on the New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater, admission is free upon registration.

As part of the music program, the Tanzpol event will take place on September 26, symbolizing continuity and deep respect for the roots of techno music and the origins of St. Petersburg club culture, created jointly with m_division, the authors of the legendary Gamma Festival. The event will take place on two stages and will bring together 12 artists in a line-up. For the first time in St. Petersburg, the legendary Derrick May, one of the three founders of the Detroit techno genre, which influenced the entire global electronic scene, will perform here. Admission to the music program is by ticket.

The parallel program of the Festival includes the exhibition "Streams of Imperfection" from the Berezovy Industrial neuroartists community at the Digital House Gallery; a showcase for first-year students of the ITMO Art & Science Master's program at the AIR Gallery, the exhibition "Fake Truth" from the OCHRE digital gallery and the Artocracy ecosystem.

On September 27 and 28, the building of the famous Alexandrinsky Theater will turn into a canvas for digital art, thanks to the screenings of the works of the finalists of the mapping competition. On these two evenings, the facade of the theater will sparkle with new colors, plots and images.

And on September 28, at 21:30, the audience will see a big closing show on the facade of the Alexandrinsky Theater. With the help of video mapping and lighting solutions, the Smartlight team will revitalize the architectural appearance of the theater and emphasize the continuity of art history — from classicism to modernity, from ancient motifs to the avant-garde and digital art. The show will be accompanied by a musical performance combining Russian traditions and modern dance electronics. Admission is free.